it sounds like $h!t i'm so sorry. your life has really been ripped out right from under your feet.

i appreciate your friend wanting you to redirect energy, but i guess, i was thinking of this on the bus home tonight (i was numb) that i was grateful for my life even if it never got any better. because it might mean something to someone else. which would make it meaningful - even if not in the way i would have liked it to be or even more strongly, in the way that that i felt it was meant to be.

i really feel i have not/cannot/will not fulfill my destiny or something like that and i get something similar from you. difference is only that in my case i feel guilty/responsible, while in your case i can't see feeling anything but robbed.

disease didn't take anything from me Kay. i did. i didn't have the guts or the whatever to just break out of the mold (or mould!!!) and do what i believed in, what i felt i was born for. anyway whatever's left, for whatever it's worth.... i hope it's worth something to somebody, even if i haven't lived up to my "potential" or my "calling" and regardless of fault/cause.

i don't know if i could take "pride" in being a housewife while feeling like a cut-off nurse ... i respect nursing a great deal. and i respect you as a Nurse, even if you aren't able to practice, or didn't quite finish the paperwork. it is your essence. i guess, i wonder if you can express it in even tiny ways... whatever ways you have left........ and housewifeness can be part of it, but need not be all of it. and it should not be a redefinition.

you are still a nurse. even though you do not have the means to practice.

that is what you ARE Kay. That is your essence. MS can take away your opportunities, your money, your longevity, your comfort, and eventually your life - but not your essence.

now i feel like i have got on some sort of a soap box and i hope i have not been offensive or invasive or some other objectionable thing.

(((hugs)))

~ waves ~